Guys,

I have been busy for weeks and just came back, want to continue my teaching online. Get the feeling that there are less students than before, less activities among the groups, and less momentum? EduFire is a great concept, I thought it should be VERY HOT after a few weeks, what is going wrong? Please share you opinion.

Thanks,
Leo

When I had a drop-off after a month of pushing SuperPass classes, it was due initially to personal and scholastic schedules. I counted myself fortunate to have an initial good run and am now pushing in a different area but, right now, I’m working to get involved in podcasting to promote my efforts here on EduFire and the subjects I’m trying to tutor in. I’ve taken advantage of every free class I could find to learn about social network marketing, search engine optimization, startup business development, and making good decisions in business; we can all do more to push this medium.

I don’t think interest in online education has dropped.

There seems to be less activity here on the forum…. I am not sure what is up. are people busy… are there fewer new people…. seems even the core communicators are quiet. I know Jon seemed to be pushing quite a bit about a month ago… that is when Brian Johnson came and Sun Deep… and some of the other heavyhitter business types…. Maybe he is out there again with the “big kids”…. Hope so… I would like to see many new people every day coming here but if they show up and there is so little activity from the core group they may wander off.

I noticed that there are a few people who are posting “interesting” other sites for info and the like…. These might have a tendency to draw people away from edufire rather than drawing them here. Let’s redouble our efforts and focus here, not to google docs, skype,and whatever else keeps popping up in the postings. Whatever they have we can probably find a way to have the same or better if we concentrate out attention and effort here.
I am sure interest in online education has not dropped off…. but the public is fickle…. If the tutors who are here don’t push the site and work to bring more people to the site there will be no site. I don’t think we can just market it on line…. I think we are going to have to pass out business cards, brochures and whatever else to market in the “real” world and bring people to the site….
If you have been away for a few weeks…. are you bringing people with you when you come back…. did you pass out cards, brochures, email signatures while you were gone so that even if you werenot here there were people coming as a result of your efforts….
This is a GREAT platform… It has the potential to be even more but I don’t thing Jon can do it alone… I think it is going to take all of us telling everyone about the site whether they are coming to our classes or not…. just as long as they get to know about the site…. word of mouth works.

As always, Alaia speaks sense! :)

A large part of teachers’ success is their own activity to promote themselves. If all you had to do was register on a site, and have students lined up clutching their money eager to throw it at you we’d all be rich right? :o)

Being an open platform there is a cross section of people joining as teachers: at one end of the spectrum there are those who join, market themselves consistently (including regularly posting on the forums) and make more or less what they expect over time. As with any business it takes that magic ‘time’ to built up your presence and reputation.

Then as you may expect there are those that join, have no intention to do any marketing or think they don’t have to, and are surprised that there isn’t this magical endless line of students banging on their virtual door requesting sessions and classes, …. all within 5 minutes. If only it was that easy! Those teachers will never make it because they are competing alongside those that work hard to market themselves.

For a teacher, this isn’t like a school where all you have to do is turn up and sit in the classroom and wait. The students come to the classroom like, by law! This is literally a place where you get support and tools to teach. We have the added benefit of the community! As Alaia says, market ourselves collectively in addition to marketing eduFire and those that are serious about teach can only win and be successful.

Great discussion.

I think that in adition to marketing ourselves as tutors it is important to work on retention of students.
I see that Edufire is always finding better ways to bring students, but did you ever wonder why don’t they crossover the superpass to become regular students?
Maybe that is something to think about.

I can think of one post I saw showing some “other interesting site” – weren’t people crying foul about this sort of thing?

Anyway, one thing my developing of material has taught me: work on what’s in your power to influence. For me, that’s working on podcasting, and I really want to see how far I can push that, not just for myself but possibly for EduFire in general.

Forgive me for poking my nose in here but I thought it might be useful to have a student’s viewpoint.

Personally, I have become a great enthusiast of Edufire and have promoted it whenever I have had the chance. I continue to be amazed at the quality of SOME of the offerings here and at the bargain that the Superpass option represents for me. However, I have to admit I’m a little uncomfortable about using my Superpass so liberally when I read some of the comments here.

There seems to be a bit of ambivalence on the topic. On the one hand, I am given to understand that my subscription is a a valued source of regular income that helps keep the site going. On the other, I sometimes get the feeling that by using it, I am stealing candy from babies! So as I once said to my friend Martin, I take my Superpass class with a chaser of guilt. And I’m not sure that that is great for business.

Other things that may not be great for business —

The expectation that crossover from group class to individual sessions is a step up, from the student’s point of view: I may be unusual in this, but I don’t think so. I really enjoy a small group language class — say 3, 4, 5 students. It gives me an opportunity to be present for an hour in the target language (which I like) without having to blather on for an hour (which I despise!)

Tutors with a less than professional attitude: To wit — last week I waited in a classroom, checking periodically (in another browser window) to see if the teacher had sent me a message or posted something in the forum about problems with the class. Nothing. So I waited, thinking “Do we observe the academic quarter hour here?” Finally, after 15 minutes, this word had been added to the course listing: Postponed. I swear to you that it was not there before. I am certain the teacher added it after I had already entered the classroom. My hunch is that she decided that it wasn’t worth her while to teach the class because she didn’t have enough students. I suspect I was the only one. Well, I totally get that. On the other hand, I had prepared for the class, had read the story ahead of time, studied the vocabulary, and had set aside the time in my day. Very disappointing. And although this was the most annoying cancellation so far, it was only one among many. More classes get cancelled in any given week, for reasons large and small, than in a year in the real world. And forgive me, but that is not the way to earn professional respect.

Limits of the technology: Classrooms that don’t open, either for the student, the teacher, or both. Rotten sound quality. Delays. Echoing. Recorded sessions that can’t be viewed. A system that lends itself to petty abuses like allowing a student to “enter” a classroom and get counted for payment but to leave shortly thereafter. I know you are doing the best you can and I do appreciate that. But it is realistic to recognize that the techno glitches are getting in the way of your success.

I do realize that when it comes to discourtesy and lack of professional behavior, we students have you beat (sigh!). But that is not the issue here. And please don’t think I am bashing you — far from it. I just think it’s helpful to look at things from a different perspective sometimes.

@ Joyce
Great to get your feedback. Always appreciate what students have to say.
I don’t feel you have to feel guilty about Superpass classes. Teachers who opt to teach it do so on their own accord.
Technical glitches are a pain- and I feel guilty when my students have to face those- so I can empathize. I guess it will take time for the teething troubles to get sorted out.

I agree about professional courtesies of tutors. I have had more than a few instances when I signed up for a class and the tutor chose not to attend. I think you should highlight those to Edufire- Edufire can check if there was a genuine problem; and there should be a mechanism to flag such tutors to prevent negative student experiences.

I guess lower rating for these tutor is one such mechanism- but not many students give ratings.

@ Leo and others;
I decide to see if how “popular” the superpass classes were. The most popular one has 22 students; and ONLY 3 superpass had more than 10 students. I doubt there would be over 100 students with superpass – or perhaps guilt is keeping them from attending?
Or is it like a gym pass :) – people only sign up but does’t use?

I agree with Marco that marketing helps and I think those with good ratings, community activity and tutoring experiences are beginning to benefit from it. 5 students have approached me in the past 2 weeks on their own. So I can safely say that some of the great Edufire promotions are are working.

However, some negative experiences are moving many students away as well. Besides marketing and branding ourselves better (I proactively approach craigslist students who want a math tutor to join my online classes), we need to minimize the technical snags and provide a superior student experience from the platform viewpoint and isolate the non-professional tutors to make sure the students who join have an experience they won’t turn away from.

I too am grateful for the student feedback.

I’ve been trying to make SuperPass work and get more people in my classes but, I recognize that what I’m doing is a brand in progress. Once I am fully finished with setting up the infrastructure, I can focus purely on content, scheduling, delivery and making the student experience worthwhile; I’m proud of my track record so far.

From my point of view, the problem is, my Internet experience strongly suggests that trying to police other tutors’ behavior is playing whack-a-mole and won’t get me anywhere. I want to go all-out at doing a good job with what I can control. What I cannot control, and what is difficult for EduFire itself to control, is the behavior of all tutors at once. So, there’s practical limits to what can be done there.

The question is where we go from here. It’s a big issue for all of EduFire’s…. if I may use a corporate term for a moment…. stakeholders, meaning the staff, tutors and students alike.

hi, everyone….I am somehow glad to hear these comments….since that’s how we spanish tutors feel about having less students every time, so we decided to do something about it and came up with the idea of creating a group we call “Spanish Nights”…visit us at groups and join in….

Dear Joyce,

I’ve just read your post about postponed classes and I’d love to explain why sometimes it happens.
I’m new on Edufire and I’m also new with the platform. When I already know that I will have technical problems, I prefer either to delete or postpone classes. As for the “Pinocchio class”, I think you applied late otherwise you should have received a mail where I said that since I had problems with the connection I didn’t want to take your money for nothing. That’s why I’ve postponed it to the next Wed. And I ‘m terribly sorry if you had already read the story and prepared it, but It is better to postponed it than to enter in the room and learn nothing because of the technical problems. I’m working on it and I really hope to fix them soon!! I’ve also bought a new Mac and I hope that everything will be fine.
I send my apologies and I thank you for being such a good student. The only thing I want you to know is that I REALLY love my job and I really don’t want to steal money if I know that I couldn’t make the lesson well. As for the number of students,TRUST me I don’t mind. I have classes with only 1 student and they are really nice and probably smoother even if I earn less money!

Best,
Marzia

Dear Marzia,

I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. Instead of jumping to conclusions, I should have asked you what had happened. I am really very sorry to have misjudged the situation. Please forgive me.

Joyce

It is wonderful to witness such a reasoned and emotional interchange.
This was an excellent learning experience for me.

Thank you Marzia,
Thank you Joyce.

Joyce,

Awwwww so sweet :(
Never mind, It’s my fault, you couldn’t know it and I def have to fix this terrible connection first!!!!
Grazie per aver capito!

A presto!
Marzia

Do we have data on how many students are there in edufire?
- how many courses (free, superpass or paid in full) are they taking?
- what is their level of satisfaction? and
- what subjects they find useful?

I am following the “I want to learn….” forum, and I pay attention to the student feedback, but that works only at the individual level, and we have to work on an organizational level if we really want to leave a mark in global education, and be paid for it.

You are right Francisco …. it would be good to see the big picture ….

@Francisco….we have to keep in mind that Edufire is a leading enterprenour on the field of online education…and that of course there are many things that need to be done…the thing is that few people really commit to getting things done…but again you have an excellent edufire staff you can count on anytime…ask Marco, Debbie or Koichi!

I am sure one of them will see the thread and lead us to whatever data we have.

When I speak about the organization level I mean that those many things that need to be done, must be done by all of us as an organized group.

I think several things are in play here.

For one, summer is over and many eduFire students (being students in real life as well) are back to school and college. This leaves less time for actually attending classes on eduFire.

Another factor may be the lack of free classes to attract new students. They’ve decreased significantly over the last few months. Have you noticed?

Anyways, I personally am pressed for time so as much as I’d like to say a lot more on this and conjure up some more thoughts, I’m afraid this post will have to end rather abruptly :(. Just thought I’d add a few pieces of wood to the (edu)fire.

I haven’t really seen fewer students. My classes/students have maintained basically the same. I’m more concerned with the drop in the RPS….that is disturbing.

I think that retaining students is more of an issue here as Ximena said. And that is a duty that pertains to each and every one of us.

I recognize that if a student leaves me, its mainly my fault. Not 100%, but a high percentage YES.

@Enrique RPS?
@Francisco and everyone… if you get a chance could you check this thread I think it’s something that could help to move us ahead in the real world and reflect beck to our virtual world in the form of students but I don’t know how to do it alone…maybe ther are others who have some expertise who could help out?
My daily activities puts me in contact with many different people everyday because I deal with people traveling…. I see an average of 300 people each day mostly different people. I would imagine that if some type of hardcopy info was available all of us comes in contact with many people each day who are potential students for someone here on edufire.
It’s not something that we have to go out of our way to do… just in passing conversation tell people…“I’m teaching an online class about_____ on this great site edufire. they have a lot of things being taught there… here’s a brochure about them…. check it out if you like… It’s really cool… leading edge stuff”
They may not come but they may give the brochure to someone else who does show up. It’s a gradual steady growth of awareness that if each of us only passes out two brochures a day could have a snowball effect in a month or two….

I must agree whole-heartedly with my colleague Enrique. I have not noticed any drop in students. However, I would really like to know how many students are actively taking classes per day on the average per month. This information could be provided by email to tutors or provided on our tutor dashboard. As Enrique said, I am concerned about the drop in RPS even if it is a few cents. The RPS has been rising consistently over the last few months until November and now it goes down.
I and the “Spanish Knights group” are very eager to think of ways to attract more students to Edufire. But, I think that we are missing a great market consisting of many nations where the majority of the population does not have access to Paypal or credit cards even though they may have enough funds to pay. Until Edufire gives Chinese, Japanese, and Indian internet users a secure way to pay for Superpass, we will continue to loose their money. I was speaking to a Saudi and Moroccan student the other day in a free intro class that I held and they said that they would be excited to have the opportunity to buy Superpass but could not since they did not have a credit card or access to Paypal. Could Edufire set up another option? Mailing travelers checks, western union account, wire transfer, UPS, one of the money transfer companies for Lat. America, Bank of America transaction? Something? There has got to be a way other than paypal to get these people’s money. There are more internet users in India and China than people in the United States. Surely there is a way.

I’m guessing Enrique means returning, paying students, or some variation of that.

Well, I certainly recall a lot of talk about there being too MANY free classes. I’ll probably be offering more soon as I finish course material for new classes (or new session material for new courses, what have you). I’ve been working on my outside-of-edufire promotion efforts too (website, etc). But anyway:

I’ve mentioned this to EduFire staff before but, I would really like to see statistics for what countries students are coming from and so on, which would help us figure out who we should be targeting. I also think that the way to pay for services effectively from other countries is a concern but, well, I’m not sure what solutions to go with for that right now. It’s not as if Japan, for instance, doesn’t have micropayment options, but they’re generally for people actually residing in Japan.

Anyway, I’ll start my counterattack in earnest in the days to come.

thats because they are not willing to put time and effort to it

Hmm, well, since students’ opinions appear to be welcome, here is what I think. But I should warn you: my point of view is probably considerably less enthusiastic than yours.

edufire is a relatively small platform in terms of the amount of users; thus, the edufire team probably isn’t interested in comparisons with more successful platforms. If you want to see numbers (worldwide and in various regions) have a look at http://www.google.com/insights/search/ and http://www.alexa.com/ and compare edufire with its competitors.

In my opinion, it’s primarily the job of the edufire team to promote edufire. What Marco said about teachers and marketing also applies to online learning platforms and marketing. In fact, the platform edufire is not only competing for students but also for teachers.

I learned about edufire through an e-mail by spanishpod101 about some kind of collaboration between spanishpod101 and edufire. Actually, I’m not sure what this was about but I think it is this kind of marketing that could make edufire more successful.